In Betweens
by LuckyGirly
Summary: You know how they began, and you know how they ended. But it's the inbetweens, the moments frozen in time, every smile unique, every argument and every realization, every revelation, that made them how they were. LJ, collection of semiconnected oneshots.
1. Unreachable

**In-Betweens**

Disclaimer: The Harry Potter characters and all other affiliations do not belong to me.

A/N: This is going to be a multichaptered thing...of sort of connected oneshots. The chapters will be much longer as time goes on, I just sort of...wanted to start it like this. The ship's LJ, as is almost everything I write. Reviewreviewreview. Please. They are veeery helpful. Oh. Also, do check out my profile to see some ... important fanfiction news. Ok. Thank you ever so much, as always. And I'm sorry I've been sort of MIA for a couple of months (real life takes hold...sadly.)

* * *

_And focus._

_Walk._

_One step...two… Come on, come on. Regular hallway, regular textbooks in my hands, regular, normal normal normal to the thousandth degree. This routine, it's so normal. Like breathing, really, you don't think about it._

_One leg in front of the other, come on, come on…_

_My throat's gone all dry and weird, as though dust has collected on the surface and it's choking me. I'm like a mute. I've got no hopes of possibly speaking. My tongue, why in heavens have I never noticed how odd it is till now, just lolling about in my mouth, just sitting around there, and oh god, she's coming nearer, I could see her from far away, you can always tell with the red hair really ... it's like a fire hydrant, only not that bright red, just in the sense that I notice it from possibly a range of ten-to-twelve miles away…how could I not?_

_She has her books, the neat stack of them, heavy stack, tucked carefully under her chin, why I bet her throat isn't all wonky and dry, she's got this half-smile on her face, and she walks, wow, does she walk…it's no problem for HER…_

_One step, two step, foot, leg following, foot, leg following. Look casual, play it cool, but it's impossible, near her it's always impossible._

_Right foot…left…right…left…_

_Heart thump, thump, thump, it's bursting out of my chest, god, god…my brain is marinating. It's marinating, I tell you. It's gone completely to liquid. I can't think._

* * *

James Potter is about to pass Lily Evans in the hallway, the crowded hallway, books clutched under both their chins. He walks self-assuredly, confident, always confident, through the crowded hallway filled with students. His hazel eyes twinkle and his black's hair's messy, as it always is, like he's just gotten of a broom. 

Her hair bounces behind her, red, and her eyes are green and they sparkle with some sort of indeterminable light from within, sea-green.

James looks up just Lily's about to pass him, focuses on her amid the many faces and chattering and laughing and rushing students.

He winks arrogantly and cheesily at her, sticking out his shoe and tapping her leg very lightly with it.

She rolls her eyes, pushes away from him, and continues through the crowded hallway with her red hair bouncing.

_Don't stare after her._

* * *


	2. Burn Marks

Disclaimer: Nothing related to Harry Potter or J.K. Rowling belongs to me.

A/N: I read over the (previous) second chapter and deleted because I realized it was truly awful. So here's something a bit sad, I don't know. I haven't written for awhile, and I feel rather disconnected from this site. I miss it. So…here's it, I guess? As always, telling me what you think about my writing is key to my improvement. Okay, I'm stalling, here it is.

(FifthYear)

** Burn Marks**

She doesn't remember every single day of it. Every unrecorded colorless day, every gray meaningless cloud she floated in. But she remembers some. That was when she walked through the world as if she wasa ghost, transparent, floating through agonies and loves and hearts of everyone around her.

Those days, she sat down at desks, and sharpened quills and neglected everything but her papers and notes and exams, her handwriting smaller and neater, her essays on parchment longer and excruciatinglydetailed and her tests prepared for deep into the night. Constant occupation and brainpower drained her, but nobody knew how hard she really worked herself, she made sure of that. Her clothes were still ironed meticulously (she forgot to fix her small burn marks on her hands) and her hair was pulled back neatly as ever, but if you looked closely there was a mask over her eyes. Something uncertain and undirected that suggested she didn't know yet where she was going from here.

Gaggles of concerned people surrounded her, clucking and comforting her nonsensically. Pseudo-sympathetic, yet cheerful. Probably they didn't care at all, and sometimes it occurred to her that they showed more emotion than she. She knew she was supposed to feel terrible grief, but she couldn't bring herself to feel anything but blunt numbness. Maybe that was a problem.

She was acting oddly. She switched her brain off every day carefully and she wanted to remove the screens of sympathy sheathing her classmates, she wanted to be ridiculed, stabbed with insults, marked with pain and not carefulness. There was no more pain that existed anyway; this numbness was the harshest pain imaginable.

_Her father died, you know_, they whispered and they thought she couldn't hear, but she did.

_He_ was no different from the rest, not that she should have expected him to be. He could not turn on the lights again, they were extinguished, and she felt like hitting him over the head, for the way he cautiously, carefully, looked at her now, so uncertain, and she just _hated_ it. The way he tiptoed around her and let her be without him. The way he left her so completely. The way he looked confused now; he always did in her presence now.

_You should know what to do, you idiotic, joking , jerk, and you can't take anything seriously, and look, Mr. Potter, look what you do with all this invested time in me, throwing it all away? You idiot; you complete idiot, you've lost it all, what are you doing, what are you doing with yourself, with me, with us, you're breaking something I didn't know existed. Take charge, take control; don't you see that's what I need, don't you see that whenever I slapped you, I meant it that it was a test and that I needed somebody to get angry, I needed somebody to take charge of me, I needed somebody to tell me I couldn't fall apart like this, but maybe that's the problem, you don't see me falling apart, you see me as more put-together than any of them, you don't see anything, you're blind. Every time I ignored you it was a plea, but you didn't get it, you're daft, you are, you can't leave me like this._

She walked out of Potions yesterday, into the cold reality of life, lifting the spell briefly, with all these bodies, all these hearts that are living and beating, all these beings knowing where they are going. They are like a different race because they don't turn to vapor under the shining revealing light; they remain, they are real.

_You were once like them; you aren't any longer, you brush their shells; but you're a different person now._

The most complete sense of loneliness ever sustainable has befallen her now, now as she marches off through the weaving bodies and laughter, ringing and hurting her skull, drills little precise holes in her brain. The idea that something so soft and innocent could wedge their way into her very core, seems crude.

She turns a corner and sees the same crowds and the same everything; the noise is unbearable, the emotions that teemed in the corridor, and she wondered at them, and she envied these naive people with their hearts on their sleeves, with all their souls ringing out into the crevices of the floors and ceilings, with all their expressions readable.

They are behind her, the four of them, they are laughing like everyone else, barely distinguishable yet in her mind it was all the difference in the world. They're always together.

And suddenly she stops; there is a Slytherin boy in her path, a smirk coldly vicitimizing his features. And he doesn't realize how impassive she is, how his words don't matter, her skin is thick enough now. She waits for him to speak; he sneers, tall, intimidating to others maybe, cruel colorless slits of eyes peering at her, targeting her. Among the mass and shuffle she sighs as he fixes on her, thinking he is so stealthy and so cruel, when really it's an act.

He steps in her path and she is almost relieved.

"Hey, Evans," he sneers, as the four behind her quiet suddenly. She wished they wouldn't do that. She wished not that the four would leave her alone to deal with things herself, like the bully. She didn't need _them_ tailing her; she was strong enough without them.

His nextwords trailed to her mind on a sharp straight sword-blade, only somehow missing her.

"Heard about those death eaters killing your dad, it's for the good of humanity really, the mudblood's dad d—"

A swish of air close to her, a loud, sickening crack of a breaking nose; blood streamedinswift,indecent rivers down the Slytherin's pale chin suddenly, an odd backdrop of students bustling to class with their books tucked under their arms.

Sirius stood next to Lily, glaring, apparently disgusted, at the boy before him and the blood pooling at his feet.

"And I won't hesitate to do it again, Smith," he said, his eyes radiating blazing anger.

And she felt something deeply irrevocably wrong as the people blurred dizzylingly around her, as they rushed here and there so pointlessly, they were so _futile_. The tall handsome boy with the gray, angry eyes stood beside her, defending her. There was something wrong, something sickening, about the one boy with his two friends, standing cautiously, carefully behind her; and she hated _him_ more than ever. She felt irreparably alone and separated from him. She really hated him like this, standing there useless, thinking he had no right to intervene or do anything; he had all the rights in the world.

_You know, Potter, once I thought you were brave, and once I thought you liked me. Now I know better._

Smith let out a wail, but James didn't hear it, he didn't hear it at all, he didn't see the blood pooling or register Smith's acute howls, he didn't see the rushing masses, the anonymous personalities filling in the edges of the corridor. Because after weeks of emptiness and lifelessness and cautiousness, his friend stood before him; Sirius, the brave one, defending, hazardous, heroic, getting the girl's attention, _his_ girl's attention. But she isn't anymore, he guesses.

A few inches to Sirius's right, the redhead turned her head slowly towards James to meet his eyes. He feels under a trance in her gaze, with all the world rushing past them. As if in a dream, she lets her green eyes linger on him for a moment in silence.

She waits—he could have said something if he had wanted—and with a trapped numbness burning acidly through his chest, she turns and walks away, leaving him standing stock-still.

_Run after me_, she thought desperately, _please, James_, but he never knew that.


	3. Hands

Disclaimer: Harry Potter doesn't belong to me.

A/N: Hmmm.

(fifth year)

Hands

Maybe, she thinks, the only reason she said yes was because of his hands. The hands that took hers, under the cherry-blossom tree on a warm Saturday at three o six precisely. And when he asked her to go to Hogsmeade with him, she was thinking more about his hands than the actual date.

She had an obsession with hands in general, but Sirius Black's hands were, in her mind, the model of pure perfection. She had always stared at his hands in class. They were always lazily resting on his desk as he precariously tipped back in his chair, stretching slightly and grinning at James Potter (who would naturally be at the desk next to him, doing more or less the exact same thing). His hair fell in his eyes as he grinned, seeming to emanate a relaxed coolness, effortless, elusive.

His hands looked strong and large and tanned, with the nails a bit short round the edges. Rugged hands, with his shirtsleeves rolled up a bit in the summers' heat, exposing his powerful wrists. The muscles strained a little as he pressed himself back from the desk, and they operated with such a natural, relaxed ease, strong and sturdy yet fluid and gripping all at once.

It was a warm Wednesday and the teacher was droning on about something at the board but summer was fast approaching, seeping through the opened window, sunshine slipping over desks and illuminating them. Heat pulled the shirtsleeves of the boys up; it likewise exposed the girls' collarbones as they unbuttoned their tops by one or two buttons; it was solid and pressing and gold-colored. Outside, almost absurdly perfect-looking sprays of blossoms were still in the heat, on the trees, and the grass was a new green; the grounds were perfect and appealing. It was evident that all the fifth-years wanted to do was sprint as fast as they could out of the constraining classroom, through the freeing grounds and into the shade of a willow tree.

_Come on, Lily, pay attention; it's summer, so what? You still need to do well, and his hands are not going to stop you from concentrating. They are not, it is silly for even considering that. _

She turned her gaze back to the teacher and wrote down a few words, blood pumping almost audibly through her. She wouldn't look at his hands again. They wouldn't take her focus. She wrote a few more words down, concentrating solely on her parchment, pressing the quill a little harder down than was necessary to write.

His slow, lazy yawn made its way to her ears; she couldn't help it; she glanced over almost reflexively. He was stretched even further back in his seat; his hands were now crossed behind his neck (_how does he do that without tipping over, anyway_?) ; he looked relaxed. Her eyes quickly traveled across his slightly muscle-straining forearms, as his white crisp shirtsleeves slipped a bit upwards. He was made so perfectly in his casual carelessness.

He caught her wandering eyes, grinning a little mocking grin at her. He was handsome. The sunlight was all over his face, illuminating her eyes, making them sparkle at her. The blood pumped warm through her.

And after, she gathered up her books and he slowly took his, with his hands, those hands, those strong hands, those graceful rugged hands. Laughing and joking with his friends; he was oblivious as the sunlight hit his face, making it ever more alive for her benefit.

Stepping through the halls to lunch, she tried to stop running her mind over him and his hands. She liked his hands. She liked the way he could grip a quaffle in concentration with them, every muscle alert, fine-tuned and elegantly passing and receiving easily. She liked the way he held a quill with them, concentrating sometimes, precise with his handwriting and his schoolwork. They were serious hands then, hands with a purpose, and she liked to watch his hands, gripping a quill in the common room, sometimes betraying his facial expression. His hands showed no nervousness; he was the epitome of confidence; ease. But you could tell he tried with these hands, and they were made perfectly because whatever he tried, he succeeded.

It was different when he held girls in his lap or hugged them. Then his hands were different; they transformed to the needs of the situation, they adapted. They became graceful and caring, yet still large and rough and strong, but exercising their power carefully and gently. They were responsible, protective hands then, caring hands. His hands across a girls' back as he hugged her, his hands over a tiny girl's waist as he held her; careful, protective, rugged and contrasting with the little carved diamond held in the palm of his hand. That was always how it was with him. His face in a indulgently gentle smile, his hands serious. On some inscrutable quest.

Sometimes they had talked outside the classrooms and in the dining hall and she felt a kind of simple happiness from the interactions. A selfish happiness. He always knew how to relate to people, he knew somehow, intuitively, and what she loved most is that it wasn't faked. Him, six feet tall with dark hair in his crisp white collared shirt and tie, leaning against a doorframe and laughing; her, small at five-foot-two, redheaded, looking up.

And then his hand was on her small shoulder, and she turned around, and he smiled at her, and asked her if she wanted to go for a walk outside.

She said yes.

They walked and his strides were bigger than hers always; she could see he tried to tailor his speed to hers, and it made her smile. The sun, with all its brightness and rays, set her hair aflame and his smile shone down on her, as if a gift from some divine presence.

He made her laugh; she looked down at her hands and his, swinging side by side, juxtaposed, her creamy white small hands, delicate and meticulous, next to his, tan and large and relaxed and she wondered if they would meet. His finger brushed hers, was it on accident? Was it on purpose?

He led her to the shade under the cherry blossom tree. He was so tall that his hair brushed the branches. One tiny flower floated gently onto his hair, pale pink contrasting with his dark hair. Her face split into a smile as pure as the blossoms around her, and she picked it out. He grinned and gathered her hands, holding them in front of him, innocently, delicately, sweetly. Her hands felt suddenly electric in his; his hands enveloped hers. Sunlight spread in her body and especially her stomach.

The air felt new and the sprays of flowers swayed around them.

He looked down at her, _Would you like to go to Hogsmeade with me this weekend, Lily Evans_, and she looked down at their intertwined hands; Adam and Eve in a Garden of Eden.

_Yes, I will, Sirius Black_, as the flowers melted down around them in self-contained pure happiness. A heavenly canopy, and his hands and hers making an indeterminable bond.

Sometimes the only reason she thought she said yes was because of his serious eloquent hands, hands that spoke to her, and the cherry blossoms that fell around them.

* * *

p.s. It _isn't_ meant to be S/L at all. Just a little peek to what might have happened once in the fifth year. Just letting you know. 


	4. Endings

Disclaimer: Harry Potter doesn't belong to me.

Endings

"Hey, Lily."

"_Yes_, James?"

"What's with the '_yes, James_?'-ing?"

"I'm trying to study for my Arithmancy exam. And you're interrupting me every two seconds."

"I've always said you study too much, it just isn't natural."

"Maybe not to you."

"Oh, come on, Lily. Lighten up a bit. It's sixth year. We're supposed to be having fun—you know, spiking the pumpkin juice at dinner, sneaking to Hogsmeade on weekend, slacking off, all that—"

"Spike the pumpkin juice then, I don't have a problem with that, but you'll get in trouble with McGonagall."

"But you're supposed to be rebelling too! We're sixteen, aren't these supposed to be the best years of our lives?"

"If you call tripping over your own feet in the Great Hall, then transfiguring Sirius's robes into a pink tutu to detract attention from yourself, then I suppose they are the best years."

"That was just the one time."

"Believe me, James, I could go on if you'd like me to."

"No, that's really okay, it isn't necessary…look, I just thought…I don't know, I…"

"What?"

"I—well, I just thought I'd ask you…"

"Ask me what?"

"If you wanted to go to Hogsmeade with me this Saturday?"

"I thought the next Hogsmeade visit wasn't for two weeks."

"It isn't, we could sneak in—it isn't hard, there's a passageway we could—"

"James, no."

"—it's safe really, Sirius and Remus and Peter and I've gone there so many times, it's really—

"No."

"—fun, and it could be the beginning of your rebellion against authority, always a good thing—"

"I said no."

"—Hondeyduke's…wait…you said no?"

"Yes."

"I wouldn't transfigure your robes into anything—"

"No."

"Okay."

"Now will you let me study?"

"In a minute."

"Well, say what you've got to and hurry, because I need to do well on this exam."

"Okay, I'll make it quick—"

"Go."

"I—"

"_Hurry_."

"You know what--never mind, Lily, I just wanted to say that I'm done with this. Put it on your stunning _academic record_ or whatever. Congratulations. You've got what you always wished for."


End file.
